TRUE POTENTIAL

The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2016 looks to the future and that of its own, presenting the most number of new creations in the festival’s history

ontinuing the trilogy that started with a focus on the past with Legacies in 2014, followed by the present with Post-empires in 2015, the theme for this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) is Potentialities, which centres on the potential to develop in the future and transform society. The thread also reflects the festival’s future as it moves towards becoming a “creations” festival. Out of the 20 productions this year, 15 are brand-new creations commissioned for the festival—the most yet. Festival director Ong Keng Sen believes that “the investment of supporting and developing artists will set SIFA apart in a crowded landscape of arts festivals in Asia”. Expect original works from established and emerging, local and international artists as well as eight productions with collaborations bbetween them, played out aacross five trajectories. Among them, Iinnovation sees eestablished artists eexploring new tterritories such as ddesign extraordinaire Rron Arad’s monumental ooutdoor video installation 720°,7 which projects performancef filfilms byb leadingl contemporary artists; Individual trajectories with tradition are examined in works such as The Last Bull: A Life in Flamenco by Checkpoint Theatre, about the life of 75-year-old Antonio Vargas, one of the world’s leading flamenco dancer-choreographers now based in Singapore; New space-time relationships are explored in Fernando Rubio’s Time Between Us, a meditation on aloneness and embracing change. From August 11 to September 17, at various locations. More on the festival line-up at sifa.sg